


The Princess and the Pauper

by LavenderTheMenace



Series: Taking Pride [3]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: 1950s, Academia, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon Jewish Character, F/F, Female Charles Xavier, Female Erik Lehnsherr, Female Jewish Character, Found Family, Gen, Israel, Judaism, Just tell each other you're mutants, Lack of Communication, Mourning, Nazi hunters, POV Jewish Character, Pre-Canon, Queer Character, Queer Themes, keeping secrets, looking at you movies, raven with a personality outside of 'sister' or 'sidekick'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-04-12 13:55:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19133395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderTheMenace/pseuds/LavenderTheMenace
Summary: Erika Lehnsherr (Matya) (Klara Eisenhardt) was a woman who knew what she wanted, and exactly how she intended to get it. She wasn’t soft curves or warm laughter, she had no use for kind touches or gentle persuasion. She was a woman with a mission, and she needed nothing else.Charlotte Xavier was everything Erika wasn’t. Charlotte was messy curls and easy conversation, she was grace and poise, and she questioned everything with a child-like curiosity Erika had long-since shed.She was going to get Erika killed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Blending of comic-verse backgrounds and world-building, and the movies we all love and rag on from Fox. To include the abandoned X-Men Origins: Magneto film. Erika's background has been kept largely similar to Erik's canon biography, but everything is better with lesbians.
> 
> \- Lav

 

Sunlight streams through the clouded glass windows of the synagogue, the well-tended wood of the floors, the seats, the mechitza all glowing in the last light of the day. In the back sits Erika, murmuring her prayer quietly and quickly, before the other congregants leave for their lives waiting outside, before the minyan is no more.

“... _v’al kol yisro-ayl, v’imru omayn_.”

Three steps back, nod right, ahead, left, ahead.

“ _Oseh sholom bim’romov,_

_hu ya-aseh sholom olayu,_

_v’al kol yisro-ayl, v’im’ru omayn._

“ _Ah-mayn,_ ” Erika repeats to herself. This is it, the last day of eleven months of mourning her lover, her daughter. Eleven months of prayers at minyans which may or may not count her toward the quorum. Eleven months of grief.

She thinks she should feel _something_. This is it, isn’t it?

Beside her, old wood creaks. An old man settles beside her. “Rabbi,” Erika says, nodding to him in greeting. They sit in silence for a few moments, the rabbi nodding to the others as they shuffle out, going home to their wives, their children, their suppers.

“I’ve mourned,” she tells him. Erika keeps her eyes fixed on the ark, straight ahead. Her knuckles are white against the dark blue of her father’s siddur. “I’ve mourned my -” she almost says wife, but Erika has never been that stupid. Even if the sentiment of it was true. “- my _sister_ , and my daughter. I’ve said my prayers, I’ve sat shiva, I - rabbi, still I feel no relief.”

She knows that she should be ready to rejoin the world at this point. Her mourning should be over. At the very least, it should be far enough behind her that she can bear to be a part of society again, can bear to be _human_ again.

The rabbi, Avrahm, sighs. She finally looks over at him. Outlined by the fading daylight, he nearly resembles her father, Jakob. She could almost smile at the memory, if it would just let her hold onto it long enough. Before she can grasp it, though, the rabbi speaks.

“The kaddish,” he says slowly, his voice careful and measured, “it is a symbol of faith, Erika. It is for your edification, not your relief.”

It’s all Erika can do not to roll her eyes outright. She could argue with him. She’d probably even enjoy it, she and Avrahm had spent several mornings and afternoons arguing over responsa these past few months. She could argue that the entire purpose of the mourning process is to give the mourner’s _relief_ via a structured path back to unencumbered society.

She could argue that edification is all well and good, yet she still, eleven months later, feels like an _onen_ . Technically, she even is one - she ran when the soldiers began shooting at her in Vinnytsia, that gave her no time to find Magda’s body, and she hadn’t finished burying Anya’s. By that measure, without a funeral, she’s still in the _aninut_ period of mourning, and Erika knows in her bones that she always will be.

Avrahm probably wants her to argue, will likely use it to illustrate to her that she can let herself be relieved of her duties as a mourner.

G-d, but Erika’s tired. So she swallows her argument. She lets the silence sit.

“What will you do now?” asks the rabbi.

Erika shrugs, pretending to be unconcerned. “School, I suppose? There’s plenty of opportunity to start again, I hear. Maybe I’ll go to Haifa, or Tel Aviv.”

Looking at Avrahm’s smiling face, his eyes twinkling with obvious hope for her healing, Erika can almost believe she will.

 

\--- 1956 ---

 

Technion, glittering like a desert jewel in Haifa’s late summer sun, is a marvel of dedication and learning. Its staff and students share a near single-minded focus on the hard sciences, improving them, making them better. Its engineering classes can almost bring Erika to forget her past, to imagine a new, brighter future. G-d, but she loves it, the nuance. The puzzle. It is its own kind of peace, or as close to it as Erika can manage.

It’s been three years since she came to Israel. Four years since she found out what she was and lost everything she held dear because of it. It’s a good life, Erika thinks, which she has built for herself here. She has a small apartment furnished with simple necessities. She’s enrolled in several engineering classes, she audits several more. She’s learning English (doing very well at it, too, according to Sarah, her Irish-born tutor) and has begun to volunteer at a psychiatric hospital, one which caters to survivors of the Shoah.

There has only been one incident of being recognized by someone from the camps, and even that did not go so badly as Erika had feared. (Her fears involved much more blood, more metal, more  _ Schmidt _ ). 

The man in question had been a  _ sonderkommando _ at Auschwitz, one of the men she and Roza and some of the other women working in the  _ pulverraum _ factory has smuggled gunpowder to, before the uprising. Before they had blown the roof off a crematorium and a few - so very few - of them had been able to escape.

Erika hadn’t recognized him. She didn’t understand how he had recognized her.

At least there hadn’t been shouting. Erika had never been one for handling shouting with grace. Once the man was calmed, brought back to the present and reminded where he was, that he was safe, Erika went back to her usual duties. It was another day, like any other. 

The science, the hospital, they bring Erika a measure of peace that she was sure Avrahm would be happy to see her hold. Yet, she feels like a ticking time bomb, like she is just biding her time until something  _ better _ comes. She knows that all of them, everyone who had been in the camps, responded differently to trauma. Some ate. Some became pious. Some abandoned their lineage entirely. Some could hardly function, and some went above and beyond the impossible.

As for Erika, she just… she needs to feel like she is doing something. Something to help. So she volunteers as a nurse. She isn’t soft, she isn’t kind. But she’s exacting and she notes every detail. She’s an exemplary student and volunteer.

(She’s an exemplary Nazi hunter as well, but she doesn’t advertise that.)

But summer is ending, and here Erika sits in her advisor’s office, attempting to make sense of his proposal. 

“Oxford?” she asks. “I’m sure I don’t understand what-”

“-Yes, yes, you don’t know what I’m talking about, get on with it,” Professor Koennig says crabbily, waving a gnarled hand in Erika’s general direction to shut her up. “You are a woman,” he informs Erika, as if this is somehow news, “as is the visiting doctoral student. Therefore, the faculty and I have deemed it prudent that you accompany her and show her around the institute.”

Erika is, in a word, unimpressed.

“Right,” she drawls, leaning back in her chair. “And why am I so blessed, professor? Surely you realize I have a life outside of your lectures. I volunteer, I-”

“You go to the hospital, you audit the classes you aren’t taking, and you go home,” the professor snaps. He, too, is unimpressed. “You have no husband you’re obligated to, you have no children or parents here to care for.  _ Someone _ needs to show this girl around, and we’ve chosen you for the job. Consider it a part of your TA duties.”

There are days, many of them, in which Erika wonders why she ever thought academia was an improvement on being a farmhand. At least as a farmhand she had had a hoe or a rake with which to smack sexist men.

“Fine,” Erika says curtly, picking up her bag. “Am I to carry her bags from the airport, too, or can you arrange for that?”

As it turns out, from Erika’s lips to G-d’s ears, she will, indeed, be carrying the Oxford girl’s bags. She’s to meet the girl at the airport at half-noon this coming Monday.

Whoever this  _ Charlotte Xavier _ girl is, she had better not expect Erika to like her. At all.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Traffic is disgustingly bad.

Erika has been in her car for nearly two hours, and the metal surrounding her, surrounding her car, singing in the hot noonday sun, practically begging to be _pushed aside_.

She takes a deep breath. This is fine. She is going to finally reach Tel Aviv’s Lod airport, she’s going to pick up Xavier, she will drive them back to Haifa, and she will light Shabbos candles and go to sleep. Everything is going to be _fine_.

Except that it’s not, and Professor Koennig had given her the wrong information, saying to go to the airport in Haifa - but the former RAF base didn’t take international flights from Europe, and damn it all, what if her flight was redirected Sde Dov airfield? They’d started doing that lately with local flights, due to the increased numbers coming in and out of Tel Aviv.

Frustrated with herself, Erika waves the possibility aside - Xavier was an international flight. It won’t do to borrow trouble. So she sits in traffic until she’s ready to stab herself with the gearshift, until she finally pulls up to the curb under arrivals. She parks, pulls out a paper with “Xavier” written in thick black marker, leans against the side of the car, and waits. In the ridiculous summer sun, with sweat trickling down the back of her neck. Lovely.

Luckily, Erika isn’t waiting long.

A few cars down, a pair of girls with luggage - already returned by the skycap and delivered curbside by a porter - at their feet are standing on their toes, peering around. One of them, a blonde ambassador of the New Look, catches sight of Erika’s sign and points over the other’s shoulder at it. The second girl is soon half-running toward Erika, her curly brown hair escaping its braid and framing her face like a halo.

“Oh, hello,” the brunette says with a breathless grin, stuttering to a stop in front of the car. “Are you from the Technion?” Erika stares at her for a moment, and the girl drives on. “Charlotte, Charlotte Xavier,” she introduces, then points back over her shoulder at the blonde. “And that would be my sister, Raven.”

“Erika Lehnsherr,” Erika replies, pushing herself off from the car. “Here, let me help you with your bags...” Neither Charlotte nor her sister look like much in terms of strength, and Erika has the advantage of her powers to lift their cases more easily, and to prevent any scratches to her beloved car in the process.

There’s not as much as Erika might have expected for two women - two relatively small sets, one traditional cloth and leather, the other modern pastel plastics, both over metal frames. The former was dark brown, accented in green and blue tartan, and consisted of only a hatbox and suit-case, both monogrammed “CFX” - belonging to Charlotte. The plastic set was a vision in pale blue, and much the same, just with an additional makeup case. The gold monogram read "RDX" - these must be the sister, Raven's. Erika supposes that the sisters might share the one, or else Charlotte isn't one for cosmetics.

Either way, it all fits quite easily in the trunk of her car, with the two hat boxes sitting in the back with Raven. Erika slides into the driver’s side of the front bench to find the brunette, Charlotte, just buckling herself in. She looks up and beams sunnily at Erika. She has, Erika notes, very blue eyes.

“Thank you so much for all of this,” Charlotte tells her.

“Not a problem,” Erika replies. She manages a smile. She’s never been comfortable with praise. Anger is her forte, and she harnesses it like a weapon. Praise is… uncomfortable. So, she lets does what she knows how to do well, and redirects their attention. “Are you both participating in the academic exchange, then? Professor Koennig mentioned that you worked for a lab in London while studying for your master’s degree...”

Raven’s laughter peals like bells from the back seat, followed by a quick, emphatic denial of any hard scientific interest - she gives music lessons to children, it would seem. Charlotte, meanwhile, perks up in delight at the questions, and begins a long, detailed explanation of the work she has been doing. It apparently is closely related to her focus since she graduated from Bard College in New York - at sixteen - and the Xavier girls moved abroad to England.

Privately, Erika wonders what parents allowed one daughter, let alone both of them, to leave home so young for school. She wonders if her mother would have done. Outwardly, she simply expresses surprise, mentioning that she had thought Charlotte closer to her own age of twenty-six, and asks more about the (multiple) doctorates the other girl is working towards.

While the curly-haired scientist chatters on, Erika takes the time to study the two sisters.

That there are two people in her car right now is a bit of a surprise. But then, Professor Koennig had also thought Haifa received international flights, so really any information from him was more or less suspect. Though, now that Erika looked at the duo, they didn’t particularly look like sisters.

Charlotte, beside her, looked every inch the studious type. In particular, the studious _woman_ , and there was a difference. By G-d did Erika know there was a difference. While their male counterparts may laze around campus in white undershirts and leather jackets, or else in loose sweaters and loafers, Erika, Charlotte, and their fellow women in academia had to do them one better.

It wasn’t enough for them to be brilliant, to work hard, to know their work like a mother knows her child. In addition, if they wanted to be taken seriously rather than assumed to be seeking a "Mrs" degree, they had to be sexless yet stylish, well-dressed and equally well-mannered. A man could be a genius and a boor, but a lady without social graces would never have half a chance to finish her thesis.

So, yes, Charlotte looked like a studious woman. Knit top, cardigan, plaid skirt and penny loafers - very put-together. The blues and greys went well with her eyes. Not that Erika had any reason to note that part.

The little sister, Raven, was not of the same type as her sister. She dressed more fashionably, with her beaded sweater, neck scarf, and swing skirt draping over saddle shoes. Erika wondered if she was in school as well as giving lessons, or merely taking this opportunity to accompany her older sister while she had the chance, before marriage or duty had her firmly in their grasp.

Raven noticed her glance back in the rear-view mirror and winked. She had the same blue eyes as Charlotte. Perhaps not so unalike, then. Erika gave a tight-lipped smile back and returned her attention to the road.

Taking far less time than the drive to Tel Aviv, Haifa soon rose up from the horizon to meet them. Erika couldn’t help but bask in the fascinated looks out the windows from Charlotte and Raven. Haifa was a beautiful city, and she was proud of her small corner of it. Passing campus, she soon pulled the car up to the curb in front of her building, lucky to get a nearby spot.

“Here we,” she tells her companions. “We’re just a short walk from campus, and I can show you around Sunday, before you meet everyone on Monday. I’m afraid there’s not much to do now, though, with the Sabbath. Most things are closed early.”

Charlotte nods seriously, appraising their surroundings, while Raven frowns, but shrugs off whatever is the root of her confusion.

“Since this building has an agreement with the school, Professor Koennig informs me that you should have an apartment here - number 3B. I have the key here,” she pulls it out of her pocket and hands it to Raven, who’s closest. “If you need anything, I live here as well, in 2C. Don’t mind the neighbor across the hall from you - Meir is a student in the Engineering department, he has nowhere else to sing _but_ at home, for no one wants to listen to him.”

That gets a full-on guffaw from both sisters, who grin and thank Erika as she helps them up the stairs with their bags. Like most of the apartments in her building, theirs is pre-furnished, so there isn’t much for Erika to do other than leave them to settle in. With that, she goes home, she lights her candles, and she begins to read.

 

\---

 

Having neighbors she actually talks to is, Erika finds, actually quite nice. Despite - due to? - the knowledge that it is only for a semester. Raven, while less of an academic than Charlotte and not as engineering-minded as Erika, is in fact very clever. Far more than her initial, self-dismissive music teacher explanation would have led Erika to believe. Raven knows half a dozen languages, and has an abiding interest in computers and radios, as Erika learns when she finds the girl in her apartment one day, Erika’s radio in pieces on the floor, while the blonde fiddles with some part or other.

Erika clears her throat.

Raven’s head pops up from her work. “Oh,” she says. Then smiles. “Hey there, Erika!”

“What are you doing in my apartment?” Erika asks carefully. She’s trying to figure out how the girl had gotten in - the door was locked.

On the floor, Raven shrugs. “I picked the lock,” she informs Erika nonchalantly. “Lottie’s in classes or something, and when I stopped by the other day you mentioned your radio wasn’t picking up signals as well lately. So I decided to fix it.” She screws something in place and picks up another widget. Not a single ounce of regret seems forthcoming.

“... Right.”

Erika busies herself with cooking dinner after that, chopping vegetables and boiling noodles. She doesn’t keep strictly kosher - she doesn’t have the space to, honestly, and shudders to think of how many more dishes she would have to do if she had separate sets for _milchig_ , _fleishig_ , and _pareve_.

She had intended to spend her evening before service going through files in her office - Weisenthal had sent her a letter expanding on some information she’d shared with him, and she wanted to follow that lead - but with a guest over, the course of action seemed unwise.

So salad and noodles it was.

Charlotte soon appears, looking for Raven. Erika finds herself inviting both women to stay for supper, and before she knows it, she and Charlotte are debating Charlotte’s focus of study - human mutation. Charlotte theorizes that the occasional case of seemingly-extra human mutation noted sporadically over the last half century would increase going forward. That such cases are not, as is commonly believed, freak accidents of nature, but a sign of a greater, species-wide shift, befitting the new Atomic Age. 

Erika knows that in "mutant" existence, of course, Charlotte is right - had she and a dozen others (now dead,  _ zikhron livrakha _ ) not been subject to Schmidt’s experimentation for exactly such gifts? Though as to whether or not there were more like her… Erika doubts it. On the reactions of the greater population, however, she and Charlotte are of two minds.

Charlotte feels that humanity has entered a more loving age, aware in the wake of two World Wars’ worth of horrors. Erika thinks that both wars have simply proved a human need for violence in the face of fear.

Raven, as ever, makes no attempt to mediate, and soon goes back to fiddling with the radio. The feel of the metal pieces being adjusted, slowly, methodically, is a balm at the back of Erika's mind as she and Charlotte go back and forth over this (totally hypothetical, of course) issue.

This debate is becoming a touch old hat, actually. Especially since Charlotte has joined Erika as a volunteer at the hospital, giving them even more time to pick one another’s brains as they conduct group therapy sessions, change bedpans, and assist patients in moving about the building. Since her recovery, their formerly-comatose patient Gabrielle has even joined in on the discussions during her physical therapy sessions. Mostly, Erika suspects, as an excuse to talk to Charlotte, not that she would ever call the other woman out on it. It wouldn’t be safe, and if Charlotte didn’t return Gabrielle’s affection, better that she remains oblivious to it.

Of course, such thoughts could easily be Erika projecting. All the patients adore Charlotte - she has a way with them, with all of them, that eases some of the past’s pains. Perhaps due to her background in psychiatry - apparently she earned her medical degree in the field before admission to Oxford. Whatever the reason, Charlotte is a study in contrast when paired with Erika. Where Erika is exacting and precise, Charlotte can make patients laugh with ease, and is a font of quiet support. It’s natural for the patients to be drawn to her.

Perhaps Erika is simply reading too much into Gabrielle’s behavior toward the woman.

Looking at the calendar tacked to the wall behind her friend, Erika feels a pull of sadness in her gut. The semester will be over soon, and gone with it will be Charlotte and Raven. So, too, will Erika. _She_ will be following that lead into Switzerland, now that she has the funds saved up to go hunting for a couple months, maybe for a semester. She doubts she'll keep up contact with her newfound friends when she goes - disappearing form the face of the earth for months at a time does dampen friends' eagerness to continue correspondence. 

Shaking her head, Erika returns her focus to the conversation. She admires the idealist in Charlotte. But this girl, born to safety and wealth in America, doesn’t have a true grasp on what it meant to be _different_.

And how could she? She was only human.

 


	3. Chapter 3

\---1961---

_Bzzz! Bzzzz!_

“RAVEN! The door!”

“I’m _going_ , Charlotte, just a minute - _COMING!_ ”

The door swings open to reveal a schoolgirl, still in her uniform pinafore and sweater, half-soaked from the late autumn rain. Upon seeing Raven - _blue eyes, blonde curls normalnormalnormal_ \- the gap-toothed redhead squeals in delight and latches herself around the woman’s waist.

In the hall, her mother sends Raven an exhausted smile. 

“Is four o’ clock still fine?” Margaret asks, adjusting a non-existent stray hair. Not waiting for a reply, she continues, “Lovely. Well Marsha, mummy will be by to pick you up later, be good for Miss Xavier, now, yeah?” Margaret presses a kiss to her daughter’s cheek and sweeps away to finish running her errands for the day.

Dislodging the nine year old attached to her person, Raven kneels down to eye level. “How are we doin’ today, _Miz_ Marsh?” she asks, exaggerating her American accent to make the little girl laugh. 

It worked. Marsha’s smile is almost as wide as her puckish face. Her eyes are a bit red, which tells Raven more than she probably wants to know about how the other kids at school treated her favorite pupil that afternoon, but Marsha seems okay, whatever happened earlier.

“I’m _great!_ ” the seven year old half-shouts, pushing past Raven and into the small flat the blonde shares with her sister, throwing a backpack carelessly onto the couch and looking around. “Is Miss Charlotte here, today, too?” Marsha asks. “Can I have a snack?”

Raven smothers laughter and says, “Sure,” fixing herself and her pupil a peanut butter and jelly sandwich each before washing hands and leading the girl over to the upright piano that takes up most of the living room.

It is probably a cliche, two sisters in their late twenties - practically _spinsters_ , the horror - living together, one giving music lessons from the living room. But, well, Raven has always loved music, and she isn’t as scientifically or academically minded as her sister. She likes _doing_ things more than studying them, and reading is hard for her to focus on. She likes languages, fiddling with radios, electronics when she can get her hands on them, and music. People-type things, versus Charlotte’s love affair with brainy-type things.

Char’s semester abroad in Israel, back during her first doctorate, had been good for both their interests, in its way. 

Charlotte got to talk to people about her research and be taken more seriously than she had been before. She got to develop her theories about human mutation, discuss examples of engineered genetic change with leaders in the field - sure no-one knew how to recreate the Captain America super soldier formula developed by Erksine in the war, but plenty of conjecture and theory was bandied between academics. Charlotte had found herself in her element, and truly come into her own there, arguing and learning to stand firm by her theories and her work. Raven, after a spring break trip with a few more New Age-minded girl friends, liked to tease that her older sister had found her Zen.

In seriousness, though, Charlotte has become a stronger woman for that trip. She’s had to, clawing her way through academia as she has. Raven likes to think their old penpal, Erika, had an influence on her sister. They were both keen, obviously brilliant women, who fought tooth and nail to be heard. Some days, Raven wonders whatever happened to the older woman, after she’d stopped answering their letters.

How simple it would have been, for Charlotte to follow in Mother’s footsteps. To marry well to a man not quite at her level of brilliance. To support his work and further his career behind the scenes, running a household and raising children and drinking herself to death. Raven’s not sure what kept Charlotte from that path - heavens know, it would have been easier - but the brunette refused. She still refuses, in the same way Raven refuses to be relegated to the typing pool, to be dismissed when she goes to the patent office for her creations.

Both the girls could have been Mother. They could still be her, if they only gave in and went with the flow. But it won’t bring them happiness, and they know that. Charlotte is dead certain of it, and won’t be swayed. No matter how many academic advisors, professors, or classmates scoff at her ideas.

Haifa had been good for Charlotte, who at the time very well may have let herself fade into the background to appease the world. Instead, she got out of rainy old England and rediscovered her steel.

And as for Raven? Well, Raven had had the opportunity to sink her teeth into the things she loved without fear of word getting back to Mother. The luck of WASP-y, old-moneyed disinterest and a language barrier. 

Raven remembers vividly the day Erika had come back to find her fiddling with the radio, and instead of being mad, had begun to lend her books from her engineering courses, and introduced her to classmates with like interests. It had been the springboard the shapeshifter needed to delve into what she loved, and to seek to learn more about it. Meeting the other students - who _weren’t_ all terrifying child prodigies like Charlotte - had given Raven the chance to see herself in their roles. She realized these things she loves, languages and wiring and music - were things she could really _do._  

Without becoming an old fuddy-duddy like science-minded poindexter Charlotte.

So, when they got back to jolly old England, at Charlotte’s resumed urging, Raven went to university, too. Not Oxford or Cambridge or anything on Charlotte’s brainiac level, but she got a degree (emphatically _not_ a Mrs) in linguistics. When that was done and Charlotte was _still_ in school, she went back for a degree in electrical engineering with a specialty in radio frequency engineering, started taking and giving music lessons, and broke a lot of television sets.

To be fair, she never _means_ to break the television sets.

All these activities have led to a lot of days filled with the both of them running to catch a train, or to get to class on time. Lots of evenings spent in libraries together, just as many eating ice cream and drinking too much wine when some guy turned out to be a cad. Nights of laying together in the dark, whispering their fears about being alone, about finding a place in the world, wanting to be taken seriously. A lot of morning hangovers treated with Charlotte’s _disgusting_ egg scramble concoctions and lots of alka-seltzer.

It’s a good life, a good way to spend her days. Raven loves her sister, and can hardly imagine life being any different - it’s hard, being two girls on their own. But they both understand each other in that, and support one another through everything. Maybe it would be different, if Charlotte was born a Charles instead, and thus had some boyish ideas about protecting her, or treating her like a child the way both sisters just _despise_ coming from what seems like every man they meet. 

She isn’t, though. She’s Charlotte, and she gets it.

By far, though, Raven’s favorite part of her day is giving these lessons. Even more than late nights with her sister, even more than figuring out ways to improve her electrical projects and do something new. 

Lessons start once schools let out in the early afternoon, and Raven never holds more than two or three per day, even on weekends. (Does this stop a half dozen children and young teens from congregating in her apartment on the weekends? Not at all. But only two to three are there because they’re meant to be - the rest just... see it as a home away from home.) 

Some of her pupils she teaches to play piano, some to sing, some to draw - all of the things Mother had so desperately tried to interest Charlotte in, growing up, and then breathed a sigh of utter relief when Raven, at least, took to them. Mother had never been big on Charlotte’s affinity for masculine subjects. At least that insistence on a classical education for her girls had paid off for Raven’s students, if no-one else. 

For Marsha, who is teased something awful at school for her Irish father, and who is a phenomenal pianist, and has recently begun delving into composition. The girl lights up the room every time she plays, and Raven is so, so proud she has had a hand in that.

For Olive and Alma, the twins with golden little choirgirl voices who use their afternoons with Raven as an escape from their demanding socialite mother and their absent professor father, who eleven years on still hasn’t gotten over the girls not being the son he wanted. 

For Rahim, who is slowly getting the hang of the waltz alongside simple scales and sightreading, and who just about _lives_ for dancing. Even if he’s really, really bad at it. And he just about falls over himself talking to Charlotte about maths. 

For Eugene, who is uncoordinated and gangly and reminds Raven so, so much of Charlotte as a teenager in his awkwardness, who is a promising baritone now that his voice has dropped. He just likes being heard, Raven thinks.

It pays off for them. They all have wildly varying levels of interest in what Raven is actually meant to be teaching them, but the tiny community building itself around these lessons pays off for them. It gives them goals and friends and adults who listen.

These are the kids who need her, who need a creative outlet and to be seen, as much as Raven ever had as a kid. They’re the ones who stay on. The rest will attend for a couple months, until their parents stop making them or they pitch a big enough fit, and that’s fine too. Look at the difference between the two Xavier girls - Raven knows her interests aren’t everyone’s. Just like Charlotte’s aren’t hers - the older woman's latest doctoral thesis puts Raven to sleep, for pity's sake. But her core little school of creatives looks to her and this flat as a safe place to experiment and branch out and try new things. Even if Charlotte poaches some of them for the hard sciences, Raven wouldn’t have it any other way. 

She was a little girl once, who needed to be seen and heard and given a chance to not be scared. She still is, a little, and she knows that. (Wonder of wonders, a lifetime of watching and imitating people has made her weirdly more introspective and self aware than her genius sister. The telepath.) 

So she teaches them music, gives them a safe place to just _be_ , and wonders if they’d love her as much if she showed them the blue.

 

\-------

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of fluff and background-building - I wanted to expand on the more maternal parts of Raven we see in Dark Phoenix, and delve a little into who she might have been if she had a sister rather than an over-protective older brother.


	4. Chapter 4

Outside the taxi cab, the late morning sky is grey and drizzling. Fog still sits low to the ground, like a toad, having yet to be dispersed by the noontime sun.

This is of no consequence to Charlotte Xavier, who pays it no mind beyond jumping over the odd mud puddle, careful to not let the muck dirty her boots. She just shined them the night before, a flurry of impulse between her and Raven that had left their flat smelling of shoe polish and spattered with carnauba wax. Her nose is buried deep in her work even as she exits the car, reviewing and re-reading to catch any hint of a possible mistake, a word out of place, a phrase poorly constructed. She’s been working on her doctoral dissertation, preparing to argue her thesis, for what feels like eons now. Presented papers related to her work and research, attended symposiums. This go-around she’s submitting a paper to be published in an academic journal. Ideally, the feedback from other specialists in the field will feed back into her thesis, help to her develop it.

Ideally. It may indeed be a wash.

But that’s negative thinking, and truly, Charlotte has  _ not _ got the time for that. She’s to be in the lab in just under a half-hour, and she doesn’t wish to be late. Dear Rajesh, whose thoughts are charmingly in line with what he says aloud and who sees her less as The Woman in the department and more as a sort of sexless, sweater-laden house plant which occasionally harasses him to drink water instead of coffee and monopolizes the electric typewriter, will need to be getting home soon. Charlotte does  _ not _ wish to be subject to his wife’s ire again. Not after the last time the man worked through the night and fell asleep on the couch in the far corner of their shared workspace. 

She and the other doctoral candidates were all weedy academic types, and the lot of them leading his half-asleep frame to the car had been a less than marvelous enterprise.

Yes, right. The taxi cab pulls away from the cobbled brick curb and the greyed ochre stone monolith that is her destination. Charlotte tosses a few bills over the seat with a quick smile and hurried thanks over her shoulder, adjusting her grip on her briefcase and rushing into the department building. Right. She ought to have enough time now to go over a few more papers, type up the first - perhaps some of the second - portion of her next paper, and then she is to meet Raven for a cuppa and an early lunch. Delightful.

Arriving at the lab - a very utilitarian, sterile thing that somehow still attempts to be cozy with a shockingly hip wallpaper and fashionable green chairs every few doors along the corridor - things are less than delightful. 

The usual, comforting hum of busy minds (such  _ focus _ from her colleagues was terribly appreciated, it lessened the white noise considerably, thank heavens) is still present, though with a tinge of suspicion, or perhaps curiosity. ( _ myresearchmustfocus whomightthatbe veryprettywomanwonderwhosegirlfriend newdoctoralcandidate? don’ttakemyplacewealreadyhaveonechit probablyasecretaryfromthetypingpool _ ) Curiosity which is aimed at…

“Oh,” Charlotte says, a touch dumbfounded. For leaning against one of the walls in the waiting area is a figure she hasn’t seen since Haifa. Letters to whom quickly began coming back unopened, red stamps declaring the resident no longer present at that address. 

Erika Lensherr, clothed in a dark turtleneck of the Beat style with two large buttoned pockets at the hem, a scarf tied around her neck, and wool slacks, is relaxing to Charlotte’s right, looking much as Charlotte had seen her last. A touch more tired, perhaps. Her curling, nut-brown hair much shorter, yes. But all in all, she appears as very much the same woman. In the hard line of her mouth, the bellicose set of her jaw. She is even wearing the same tarnished silver Star of David, the one she had kept hidden in her shoes, and later in the bottom of a tin mug with her mother’s wedding ring, during the war.

A spark of  _ whoisthat-interest-i’mnotmovingdamnit _ and then Erika looks up to see Charlotte walking down the hallway toward her. Her mind surges brighter for a moment when she registers that it is Charlotte approaching, one corner of her mouth quirking upward ever so slightly. There are new lines in the corner of her eyes. The permanent crease of her usually-furrowed brow is a little deeper, more noticeable. Her cheeks are less hollow, though still appear capable of cutting glass from where they sit high in her face. Her skin is more deeply tanned, if that is even possible. It makes her blue eyes stand out more sharply than ever. She looks healthy. 

As Charlotte somes to an expectant stop before her, Erika pushes off from the wall.

“Charlotte,” she nods. “Or is it Doctor Xavier, now?”

Unexpectedly flustered, Charlotte stands there, blinks for a moment too long before she feels her face split into a grin and, half-laughing, she surges forward to hug her old friend. “It’s so good to see you, my friend!” She pulls back, keeping her hands on Erika’s upper arms (only partially to assure herself that, yes, the other woman is real). “My heavens, you look wonderful, Erika. Your  _ hair! _ I never could have imagined it so short. You look - very good.”

She finds herself still grinning stupidly as Erika, caught off guard by the enthusiasm, laughs. It’s a quiet, brief little thing, but oddly familiar despite their years apart.

Good lord, has Charlotte missed her. 

Raven will, Charlotte thinks as Erika leads her outside for a chat, most assuredly tease her without mercy when she finds out. Which is hardly fair, as Charlotte doesn’t poke fun when her sister runs around looking like an assortment of men or women based on how she’s feeling any given day. Yet Raven has taken the mickey for years, poking and prodding at Charlotte’s infatuation with the older woman since the first day they’d all met. 

Really, it’s not as though Charlotte can help it. Erika is such a  _ bright  _ presence, cool and focused and filled with energy. She’s captivating. The best analogy to describe her mind would be, perhaps, a lighthouse on a stormy night, while the minds around her are stars (and Raven, of course, is the moon. Always changing shape, yet eternally, essentially, the same). Erika’s mind is a beacon and draws Charlotte’s attention immediately. So for all that the telepath endeavors to stay out of the minds of others - well.

Her telepathy is best described in the same manner by which a teenaged Charlotte had explained it to her younger sister long ago. It is akin to listening to the radio, except that she  _ is _ the radio, and there is no off switch, just ignoring certain frequencies and paying rather more attention to others. Some frequencies come through clearly with little effort - familiar minds, usually. Others take more effort to tune into. They all, however, are there to be heard. 

Thank goodness Raven had shared lessons with Charlotte as a child and thus started fiddling with electronics in the library whenever Mother attempted to wrestle Charlotte into piano or painting lessons. Having the two of them to split Mother’s attention for ladylike lessons and more traditionally masculine subjects had allowed them both far more freedom to explore curricula than Charlotte suspected should have been available otherwise.

And now Erika, whose mind attracts Charlotte’s attention like a light in the dark, is coming to a stop underneath a stone archway shielded from the rain, her mind pulsing with the decision made to stop. Charlotte is brought back to Earth. 

“Really, my friend,” she says, fully aware of her dimples showing in the twist of her lips, and that Erika can likely see in Charlotte’s eyes that she is  _ this close _ to laughing at the cloak-and-dagger of their whole meeting again. “You needn’t go through all this trouble to get me alone! You might have just responded to a letter. Or two.”

Yes, yes, in fairness that was a low blow. One beneath Charlotte’s dignity, Mother would surely tell her. Yet… it’s been years. She hasn’t had an inkling of an idea as to what may have happened to Erika, where she had been, what she had been doing, if she was even alive. And now the woman stands before her, all tanned skin and steel-blue eyes, curled mop of a pixie cut falling past her brow. A raindrop trails its way down her nose from her hairline.

Said nose wrinkles in response to Charlotte’s pointed comment, Erika’s expression turning to a sort of uncomfortable grimace. Not quite embarrassed, but close. Chastised, perhaps. Her mind is still the same bubble of focus Charlotte had grown familiar with in Haifa, however, and Erika doesn’t comment on her seeming disappearance from the face of the Earth. Instead, she tosses her short hair hair back and squares her shoulders, looking Charlotte directly in the eye.

“Charlotte, when we met...” here, Erika falters, searching for words. “In Haifa, we argued about mutated humans. Evolution. It was wholly unrelated to your dissertation.”

None of this is a question, yet Charlotte finds herself nodding anyway in response. “At the time, yes,” she says, voice mild. Was this some sort of academic tiff, a grudge on Erika’s part? Would she really come out of hiding for - for a perceived infringement on her ideas? The woman’s eyes are stormy and dark - but aren’t they always? Her brow is furrowed more than usual, perhaps. Her arms crossed as if to protect herself. Yet she cannot possibly - Charlotte would never steal. She  _ hadn’t _ . Does Erika think she had cribbed her work from their talks, back in the days when they would walk down wide streets eating falafel, heading to and from the hospital or the university? When they and Raven would attempt to cook and be relegated to late-night carry out when things inevitably went awry?

Did Erika really think that lowly of Charlotte? Had she, when they were friends?

Charlotte has to explain. “But that was my doctorate in psychology,” she tells the older woman dumbly. Oh, that’s not what she meant at all, Erika will surely read it wrong,  _ why _ can’t she just express herself out loud as well as she does in her mind? She needs to explain. “I have, I admit, drawn inspiration from our discussions in my current work in geneti-”

“I am not  _ worried _ about intellectual property rights,” Erika cuts her off, scoffing. Which. Well. It  _ is _ what Charlotte suspected this may be about. She wonders if she ought to take a look… No, no. That would be the height of impropriety. Doesn’t raven always tell her she needs to respect privacy, the same as Charlotte tells her to stay safe from harm? She’ll simply have to be patient. 

“In your most recent paper,” Erika continues, apparently oblivious to Charlotte’s confusion, “your discussions of mutants - you know one.”

Charlotte can’t help it. She’s lost. She reaches out a tendril, like tuning a radio dial just a touch, or squinting ever so slightly to see on a sunny day. Not enough to really read Erika, but… enough to get an idea of the direction of her thoughts, the tone of them.

Erika is certain of the truth in what she said. 

Nothing, Charlotte thinks, will change her mind there. So she nods, wondering how Erika realized she was talking about herself and Raven (does she realize it’s Raven?) in the paper she had presented in Switzerland last year. It had been something of a passion project, not wholly related to her current studies. A mixture of her backgrounds that tied together anthropology, psychology, and biophysics which discussed human reactions to the extraordinary throughout history, their parallels in the modern day psyche.

To her surprise, Erika sags against the ancient stone archway, dark spots of rain begin to speckle her sweater now that she’s in the water’s reach. Erika brings her hands up to her face and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Looks straight ahead past Charlotte’s shoulder. She then asks what must be the  _ last _ question Charlotte should have expected from her:

“How did you know about me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.... Thoughts?


End file.
